Vegan Recipes

Bánh hỏi is a Vietnamese specialty dish. It's composed of very thin rice vermicelli noodles, often steamed and seasoned with fried green onions. They’re usually served with barbecued beef or pork but for my husband who's a vegetarian, I accompanied them with a combination of sautéed tofu, bamboo, jicama, carrots and straw mushrooms. That's why I call this dish bánh hỏi chay (hint: chay means "vegetarian" in Vietnamese).

As a child, I remember having this dish at celebrations, though I don't really know why. I make it pretty regularly in our home because in my opinion, it's very simple to prepare and always enjoyable.

Gazpacho is a refreshing first course I just had to make before the summer ended. The preparation is very easy. Cucumber, roasted red bell peppers, onions and fresh tomatoes are blended together. I flavored the cold soup with garlic, lemon, tarragon, a bit of agave nectar and extra-virgin olive oil. To provide a touch of saltiness, I topped the soup with oil-cured olives.

I served it chilled with "oeuf à la coque"-style quail eggs ("soft-boiled eggs" in English). Accompany it with lightly toasted noor thin bread from the folks at California Lavash and you'll have a truly fun summer dish!

Want some lavash to try out the recipe yourself? Don't forget to enter our contest in the box below!

When I was asked to write Haute Potato (my first cookbook coming out this December), I tested more than 100 recipes, but only 75 gourmet potato dishes finally made it to print. This salad didn’t make the cut. I think it tastes wonderful, but it’s not as over the top as the recipes in the book. In the right setting though, it would make a lovely addition to your meal.

Served at room temperature with a vegetarian dipping sauce, they make the perfect summer entree. And speaking of summer, wrapping almost anything is a really great way to exercise portion control, which will do wonders for your bikini bod!

Quinoa stuffed zucchini is not only a delicious and colorful dish, it's also very healthy. I flavored tri-color quinoa with grilled vegetables, grilled haloumi cheese and red beans. I also topped the dish with slices of sun-dried tomato chicken sausage.

I was able to prepare this dish by using the same grill pan over our barbecue that I used to make yesterday's peach melba. I've included a review of the Technique grill as well, in case you're interested. If after reading the review you can't wait to get your own, I have some great news for you! I have another grill pan to offer exclusively to one lucky reader! Sharing is caring!

Unfortunately (and this is purely due to the popularity of the pan), the grill pan is no longer available for sale because it recently sold out. That really speaks to what a great product it is! There's a similar, less expensive Teflon® Brand pan available at IKEA; it has all the advantages of TeflonR nonstick coating, but it's not dishwasher friendly and it's made for the indoors.

To make it easy, you can just copy and paste this tweet if you’d like: "The #giveaway is live! Enter to #win a BBQ grill pan from @phamfatalecom! What's your favorite meal to #grill?: http://bit.ly/MvWiVG" Good luck everyone!